Brian Wright is being chased for £45million in profits from his billion-pound cocaine smuggling operation, a court heard.The 61-year-old godfather — who was known as The Milkman because he always delivered — is serving 30 years in jail after being convicted last year. In 2004 he was said to be worth £600m and prosecutors have this week been trying to claw back the proceeds of his crimes at Woolwich Crown Court.But Wright, who had a house in Frimley, claims he has no assets left. He is refusing to attend the hearing despite being brought from Whitemoor Prison in Cambridgeshire to the high-security Belmarsh jail in south London.His barrister Jerome Lynch QC told the court: “His position is he has nothing and no matter how much he says it, that will not be accepted.“Everything he paid for was paid for in cash and rented.“The approach the Crown has taken is so unrealistic that it is pointless engaging and he takes the view that it almost doesn’t matter.
“He is nearly 62 years of age, and is serving 30 years. He will not see the light of day.“One can understand a man of his age taking that approach when it is likely he will die in jail.”Mr Lynch said Wright’s wife died last year and added: “Is it really supposed that this man who allowed his wife to die in a rented apartment in Spain is the holder of £45million?’But Wright is refusing to give evidence in court to back up his claims he has no money left.“He has no intention of going into the witness box to give any further evidence other than that which he gave in the trial,” said Mr Lynch.
Brian Wright led a double life as a notorious horse-racing punter and a major league gangster before his arrest in Spain 2005.He rubbed shoulders with royalty, boasted a celebrity lifestyle.He laundered his drug money by making huge wagers on horse racing.Wright, married for 43 years, even boasted of meeting singer Frank Sinatra and film star Clint Eastwood.His wealth afforded him a house in Frimley, his rented luxury apartment in Chelsea Harbour, and a £2m villa — named El Lechero, the Spanish for The Milkman — in Spain.He had a box at the Royal Ascot race meeting for 14 years and was a member of the exclusive clubs Tramps and Annabels in London.
Wright was finally nailed by a Customs and Excise operation which began after a boat named Sea Mist was boarded by Irish Police at Cork Harbour on September 29, 1996.
Officers found 1,230lb of cocaine — valued at more than £50m — hidden in the dumb waiter of the yacht.The shipment was meant to have been smuggled into the UK and stored at a safe house in Lymington, Hampshire, but the gang fled the property after hearing of the arrest of the crew.Left at the house was Brian Wright’s Channel 4 Racing Diary containing contact numbers for other members of his cartel, as well as dozens of famous names in horse racing and TV. In 1997, police began bugging Wright’s exclusive riverside flat in Chelsea Harbour and following him and his friends, including right-hand man Kevin Hanley.The next year, as three more shipments successfully arrived in the UK via Poole, Dorset, and Salcombe, Devon, Wright was arrested over horse-fixing allegations.
He was released on bail and in December 1998 he left the UK for Spain after having a heart bypass operation.But on February 12, 1999, Wright’s son Brian Anthony Wright and son-in-law Paul Shannon were among 15 people arrested in connection with the smuggling investigation. Five days after his son’s arrest, Wright Snr paid £20,000 through his daughter Joanne for a private jet to take him and jockey Declan Murphy to Northern Cyprus.Because the territory had no extradition treaty with the UK, he was effectively safe from arrest until he moved on to Spain in 2002.
It was only in the spring of 2005 that Wright Snr was arrested in Marbella and flown back to Britain to face trial.The same year, police arrested Hanley’s girlfriend Anni Rowland for laundering drug money and found nearly £70,000 at her home in Great Burford, Oxfordshire.
Wright, whose last known address was in Cadiz, Spain, denied one count of conspiracy to evade the prohibition on the importation of a controlled substance and one count of conspiracy to supply drugs.
His only previous conviction is for dishonesty, obtaining property by deception, in the late 1970s.
Wright Jnr, now 40, of Ridgemount, Weybridge, Surrey, was found guilty of drugs importation and jailed for 16 years.
Paul Shannon, now 42, of Lockier Walk, Wembley, was found guilty of conspiracy to supply and jailed for five years.
The hearing continues.